Andrew Cherlin

Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage

This is the longest selection in the whole Gender and Family section, and due to its comprehensive nature in terms of the coverage of several loosely connected themes it is difficult to summarize. Here I will itemize 7 key points that I believe might be quite consequential for the purpose of the prelim.

1. The great rise in cohabitation since the 70s. Contrary to the widely held view, the less educated have been the vanguards in this trend. Because of this rise in cohabitation, the likelihood that men and women live with a heterosexual partner hardly has changed in spite of the declining marriage rate.

2. The "abnormality" of the 50s - earlier marriage, less divorce, more children. The heydays of breadwinner-husband and homemaking-wife model. Cherlin argues that it has been caused by mostly period, rather than cohort, effects. Yet, exactly what aspect of the 50s contributed most to this effect is not entirely clear. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that the 50s did not mean a return to the larger family of 4, 5 children, but rather the higher fertility rate in this period was caused mainly by the tendency for earlier marriage and childbearing. On the other hand, Cherlin admits that some cohort effects may also have played a role. That is, as a result of the experience of growing up in a period of the Depression, it is argued that this cohort group placed less stress on material, economic gains and instead sought stable family life.

3. 60s and 70s saw a return to the long-term historical pattern in the 20th century - later marriage, more divorce. Yet, the reason why this shift has occurred in the 60s and 70s may be different than why the same trend took place at the turn of the century. What has been the cause of these trends in the 60s and 70s? Cherlin attributes greatest importance to the growing economic independence of women as they have moved into the labor force in great proportion since the 60s. The evidence is somewhat circumstancial, however, and the logic behind as to why women's greater economic independence can explain the decline in marriage and increase in divorce is noted of on p. 53. On the other hand, he downplays the importance of the factor of contraception in explaining the decline in fertility as not have been convincingly demonstrated. Also, another important point is that the rise in divorce was not caused by the changing attitudes, i.e., more tolerance for divorce, but rather that the change in attitudes tended to follow the change in behavior.

4. Overall, changes in attitudes toward family life and women's roles were not very rapid until the 70s. This indicates that the changing cultural values regarding women's roles could not have been a major factor in initially instigating the change toward later marriages, lower fertiilty rate and increase in divorce. However, Cherlin notes that after the 70s dramatic shift in attitudes took place and that since then the changed cultural values could have had the independent effects of their own once they were firmly set in place.

5. The change in the social function that family serves - the two functions that seemed to have remained for the family to fulfill in the modern society, provision of emotional support for adults and socialization of children, came to be fulfilled at least partially outside of the family after the 60s. With the trend of widespead sexual practice outside of the marriage, economic independence of women that undermines the need for the marriage as an economic partnership, the marriage in the late 20th century come to be judged in terms of the capacity to fulfill need for personal bonds and emotional satisfaction.

6. As the functions of the family have changed along with the concurrent trend of the rise in divorce, two consequences have been particularly notable in alterning the structure of the American family life, Cherlin notes. These are the increase in the single-parent family and the family of remarriage. Each has some significant consequences for the lives of individuals experiencing them, and it is to these consequences that Cherlin then turns. These forms of family lives have some special problems of their own to both adults and children, and particularly their effects on the lives of children have been of a hotly debated issue. As far as divorce is concerned, Cherlin's overall judgement is that it does have some real negative consequences, at least in the short term. In the long run, while most children seem to make needed adjustment to come back to the normal cycle of life, for minority of children divorce seems to have long-term negative consequences as well such as the increase in delinquency and lowered self-esteem. Meanwhile, the introduction of a stepparent after the remmariage brings in the social adjustment problem of its own right, as the social relationships involving the biological parent, children, and stepparents are rather complex in nature and at this point in time, lack institutionalized support from the larger society.

7. Finally, the all important topic of the relationship between race, family and poverty, as this has become one of the foremost concern of the American social science as the plight of the inner-city blacks have deteriorated since the 60s along with the dramatic decline in marriage and skyrocketing increase in the number of single mother families among blacks.

7a. First, the overall trend in black marriage and family since the 50s. After the WW II, the traditional trend of black women marrying earlier than whites reversed. Since then, black women are less likely to marry, stay married, and remarry. Black women now spend far less of their life in marriage than do white women. Turn to the different historical development n fertility rate between whites and blacks. Traditionally prior to the WW II blacks had higher fertility rates than did whites. By the 1980s, the two groups shared a more or less similar fertility rate, but blacks attained the lower fertility rate in a way different from that of the whites. That is, while white women postponed both marriage and childbearing, black women postponed marriage but childbearing much less. Black women began having children at an earlier age, but they also tended to stop having children at an earlier age. These developments in turn have led to one of the most dramatic and hotly discussed social trends in the contemporary U.S. today: the tendency of black women to bear children at young age while staying unmarried. To be sure, the fertility rate of the unmarried black women did not increase that much. Rather, the increase in the proportion of black children born to unmarried mothers have been caused by the two trends of: the decline in marriage among blacks, and the decline in the birth rate for married black women since the 70s.

7b. Can this trend of the decline in marriage among blacks be explained in terms of the "marriage market" theory as propounded by Becker? It may to certain extent, but it also runs into some serious limitations - seems to be the Cherlin's answer in short. To be sure, Cherlin notes that the gender gap in earnings for blacks have become much more narrower than that of the whites. Also, Cherlin concedes that the argument holding that the effect of state welfare programs providing for the adequate means of subsistence discouraging the marriage for blacks may be true for some limited extent. Yet there are limitations to these explanations - for one thing, these explanations assume that marriage market for both blacks and whites operate in the same way. Cherlin notes that this assumption does not hold true in light of the empirical evidence. For instance, black women in paid employment, unlike their white counterparts, are more likely to marry than do the the black women who are not working. Further, unlike white women, black women are more likely than not to marry men with less education than their own. Another potential factor that can contribute in explaining the decline of marriage among blacks is the numerical scarcity of marriageable young men relative to women. Several social factors contribute to this trend, such as the higher rate of interracial marriage among black men than women and the glum factor of notoriously high rate of violent deaths and incarceration among young black men. So, overall, whatever the relative mix of importance a researcher may give to the combination of all of these factors, Cherlin concludes that all of these factors affecting the nature of the marriage market combined to create the trend of the decline in marriage among blacks. The second conclusion from this section is that contrary to the claims made by number of scholars as William J. Wilson, this decline cannot be explained very well in terms of the trends in income and employment - that is, the deterioration in the prospects for finding adequate jobs to support family for black men is the principal cause of the decline in marriage. Empirical evidence Cherlin cites indicates that this factor could account for probably about only one fourth of the decline in marriage.

7c. History and Culture - since economic factors of income and employment cannot account for all of the decline in marriage among blacks, we now have to turn to the effects of historical development and culture. And to this, Cherlin notes that cultural conception blacks have of the role of family and how it should function is remarkably different from that of whites. African American culture places greater emphasis on the extended kin network and expect support from it; the tradition holds that marriage does not necessarily have to precede the childbearing; there is the greater tradition of mothers working outside home among blacks. But given these cultural differences between blacks and whites, still why is it that marriage among the black population deteriorated so drastically after the 60s? Cherlin argues that these cultural ingredients have been the influential factors in determining how blacks responded to the two crucial social trends that came in the 60s and 70s - the changing cultural ethos (in the context of the American culture as a whole) involving the shift toward greater individualism, and deteriorating economic conditions inflicting some of their hardest effects on the relatively poor inner city blacks. Faced with these changing social conditions, the black response had not been to cut back on the childbearing but rather form single parent families expecting the support from the extended kin group.

On the other hand, single-parenthood by itself does not cause poverty directly - most of the poor single mothers were already poor to begin with before becoming mothers. Yet, Cherlin notes that single motherhood does have the effect of curtailing the potential of mothers and their children to move out of poverty. Further, the extended kin group on which blacks expect to rely on so dearly may be shorthanded in supplying the needed support in the condition of dire poverty, and it may even have the effect of making the move out of poverty more difficult as the family structure based on the extended kin group hinders individuals from accumulating resources solely for their own use. Also, an empirical research investigating into the nature of the extended kin group support reports of the often temporary nature of the support grandmothers offer to their daughters having children. It may be concluded that while it is true that some support that white parents cannot ordinarily expect from their extended kinsmen can be expected of for the blacks, still those support are often not enough to overcome the disadvantage of being a single mother.

In the sphere of setting public policies, then, Cherlin mentions that there are two main objectives: encouraging marriage for those who do want to get married, and assisting parents and children who remain in the kin networks. The difficulty for the policy makers is that these two objectives can contradict each other. For instance, a tax credit or child allowance program for unmarried parents can have the side effect of discouraging marriage. The one best solution that can be thought of that does not discourage marriage without penalizing the single-parent household is to strengthen black men's connection to labor force - so in effect, even though Cherlin does not fully agree with Wilson in that he argues black men's employment and income conditions explains surprsingly little of the decline in black marriage, the proposed solution is basically similar to that of Wilson's. Nevertheless, the future might be difficult. Cherlin predicts that a large scale shift to marriage among the poor blacks is unlikely, and consequently proposes that the need for policies to assist single parent families and children directly must be acknowledged.